The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack eBook

Now Sammy Jay dearly loves to hunt for things.
Whenever he knows that one of his neighbors in the
Green Forest has hidden something, he likes to hunt
for it. It isn’t so much that he wants what
has been hidden, as it is that he wants to feel he
is smart enough to find it. When he does find
it, he usually steals it, I’m sorry to say.
But it is the fun of hunting that Sammy enjoys most.
So now Sammy thoroughly enjoyed hunting for Mr. Quack.
He peered into every likely hiding-place and became
so interested that he quite forgot about the hunters
who might be waiting along the bank.

So it happened that he didn’t see a boat drawn
in among the bushes until he was right over it.
Sitting in it was a man with a terrible gun, very
intently watching Mrs. Quack out in the middle of the
Big River. Sammy was so startled that before he
thought he opened his mouth and screamed “Thief!
thief! thief!” at the top of his lungs, and
flew away with all his might. Mrs. Quack heard
his scream and understood just what it meant.

A little later Blacky the Crow discovered another
hunter hiding behind the bushes on his side.
“Caw! caw! caw!” shouted Blacky, flying
out over the water far enough to be safe from that
terrible gun he could see.

“Quack! quack!” replied Mrs. Quack, which
meant that she understood. And so the hunt went
on without a sign of poor Mr. Quack.

XVI

SAMMY JAY SEES SOMETHING GREEN

For all their peeking and peering among the broken-down
rushes and under the bushes along the banks of the
Big River, and no sharper eyes ever peeked and peered,
Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow had found no sign of
the missing Mr. Quack.

“I guess Mrs. Quack was right and that Mr. Quack
was killed when he was shot,” muttered Sammy
to himself. “Probably one of those hunters
had him for dinner long ago. Hello! There’s
another hunter up where the Laughing Brook joins the
Big River! I guess I won’t take any chances.
I’d like to find Mr. Quack, but Sammy Jay is
a lot more important to me than Mr. Quack, and that
fellow just might happen to take it into his head
to shoot at me.”

So Sammy silently flew around back of the hunter and
stopped in a tree where he could watch all that the
man did. For some time Sammy sat there watching.
The hunter was sitting behind a sort of fence of bushes
which quite hid him from any one who might happen to
be out on the Big River. But of course Sammy
could see him perfectly, because he was behind him.
Out in front of that little fence, which was on the
very edge of the water, were a number of what Sammy
at first took to be some of Mrs. Quack’s relatives.
“Why doesn’t he shoot them?” thought
Sammy. He puzzled over this as he watched them
until suddenly it came into his head that he hadn’t
seen one of them move since he began watching them.
The man changed his position, and still those Ducks
didn’t move, although some of them were so near
that they simply couldn’t have helped knowing
when the hunter moved unless they were more stupid
than any one of Sammy’s acquaintance.